


After The Night When I Wake Up

by MooseFeels



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angels, Eating Disorders, Threesome, Underage Drinking, Underage Sex, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-20 06:17:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean are running. Cas is running, too. At some point, they start running together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The car is fast- the car is too fast. It tears by him and whips his hair around his head messily. Tears his drawings from his hands.

“Fuck you!” Castiel screams after the machine at the top of his lungs.

He’s angry. He’s so angry, and he can’t figure out why, and he can’t figure out how to make it stop.

He’s been walking since Oak Park. His feet are blistering in shoes that are too big, bloody and sore. He’ll keep walking, though. He’s not ready to stop walking. He wasn’t ready to stop running either, but then his body gave out on him.

He feels like this body gives out on him a lot. Jimmy wasn’t athletic.

The car stops, suddenly. The rubber on the tires squeals intensely, and there is the burnt smell of it on the asphalt.

Castiel keeps walking as the car reverses.

It stops right next to him.

“What did you say?” the guy in the front seat says.

Castiel glares at him. He glares at this guy in the front seat of this huge black car, like a streak of pure evil glimmering on the brown asphalt. “I said, ‘fuck you.’ Why, you wanna make something of it?”

The guy smiles, both taken aback and a little impressed. Someone from the other side of the car speaks. Driver’s side looks over at him, says something.

“What?” Castiel demands.

“I said,” shotgun pipes up, “where are you headed?”

Castiel shrugs. “Why do you give a shit?”

“Yeah, we’re headed there, too. Climb in the back.”

“What?” Castiel and Driver’s Side bark at the same time.

Shotgun is younger than Driver’s Side. He’s got long brown hair that’s floppy around his face. He’s got green-brown eyes, a color that looks both muddy and bright. Darker skin than Driver’s Side, too. He looks like he’s right on that precipice of being not-a-boy. He looks tough, though. They both look tough.

Castiel belatedly realizes that he could not take either of these guys in a fight. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, sure.”

Driver’s Side cocks his head at his Shotgun, clearly mouths something. Shotgun shrugs himself.

Castiel climbs into the back.

The car smells like the suggestion of cigarette smoke, like something that had been there years ago but wasn’t present any more. Also smells like greasy fast food and spilled soda and travel. Smells like miles and miles of road.

Driver’s Side looks at him through the rearview mirror. He’s got bright green eyes, the green of the first oak leaves in spring. “You got a name?” he asks.

“Sure,” Castiel answers. “Lots of ‘em. Do you?”

“Dean,” Shotgun answers. “He’s Dean. I’m Sam. What do we call you?”

Jimmy, they shout inside of him. Say Jimmy. Please. Please.

“I’m Cas,” he answers. He’s not sure why he doesn’t say Jimmy, and he’s not sure why he abbreviates it. All three of the names, they’re not his real name. His real name can only be heard with a choir of bells and a lion and a woman just as she begins to come.

“Cas?” Dean asks from the driver’s side of the car. “Huh. Short for anything?”

“Castiel,” he answers.

Sam turns around in the backseat and smiles at him. “That’s the name of an angel,” he grins. “The one for Thursday, right?”

Castiel nods cautiously. “Yeah,” he answers. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Sam grins a little bigger, turns back to the front seat.

“You like AC/DC,” Dean asks.

“No,” Castiel answers sourly.

“Good,” Dean answers and turns up the radio. It’s “Highway to Hell,” and it’s so loud it shakes the windows.

Just open the door and tumble out, they murmur.

“Shut up,” Castiel whispers.

He’s pretty sure neither of them hear him.

* * *

 

They’re stopped at a gas station. Cas is in the gas station, and Dean and Sam are in the head.

Dean doesn’t have to take a piss, though, not really. Sam is washing his hands when Dean takes him by the shoulders and says, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Who is this guy?”

Sam looks away from him and says, “Dean, look at him. He’s tiny, and look at his feet, too. They’re torn right up. He’s not gonna...stab me in the neck or something. If he were, he would have done it already. He’s harmless. Look, we can just drop him at a hostel in the next city and then drive on. We’ll be fine.” He looks at his brother with his big puppy eyes. He’s fifteen and insufferable, just beginning to climb out of that other side of puberty. He’s still beautiful, though, and barely smaller than Dean is. Can still melt him with a look.

Dean tries to say no. He really does. Instead, he leans forward and kisses his brother tenderly on the forehead and leaves the bathroom.

Cas eases into the backseat again, head towards Dean’s side so that Sam can recline and fall asleep. Sam sleeps a lot, these days.

They ride on in absolute silence for the next few hundred miles, until the sun goes down miles and miles from a city with a hostel.

They stop at a hotel, and all three of them climb out of the car. Sam’s hair is a mess and Cas stands stock still and terrifying in the parking lot. He looks like hell under the lights. He’s thin- he’s too thin. He looks like he’s dropped weight suddenly and like he hasn’t slept in weeks and like he hasn’t eaten for a few days. He stands perfectly still, though. Like a wall.

“Thanks,” he says, and he starts walking away from the car. He’s got a bag slung over his shoulder and a sketchbook tight in his arms.

“Where are you going?” Sam calls. He yawns.

“Dunno,” Cas answers. He doesn’t turn back.

“Are you looking to die?” Dean shouts. “Anyone  you run into right now will kill you. Hopefully before they do the kinds of things they like to pick guys up from the road for. Jesus, just...get in the hotel room, okay?”

Cas turns around and looks at them.

He must see them. He must see something to them- how fucked up they are, how they’re so thoroughly fucked up, how they’re running.

He walks back over. He’s limping in his too-big shoes.

He sniffs and looks down at the pavement.

They all walk into the shitty hotel room.

* * *

 

Dean showers last, and he climbs into the larger bed with Sammy. Cas is in the twin next to the door. He sleeps with his back to them, and Dean’s glad for that. He’s sure that Cas has gathered that he and Sam are brothers, but the fewer questions that get asked about that, the better.

He climbs into bed and Sam curls up close to him. His body runs a few degrees cool, and he’s clingy and close and tight. He nuzzles up against Dean’s neck. His nose is cold. Dean hugs his little brother close and smells his hair. It smells like the shampoo he uses but also of the essentially Samness of him. It smells like the most important thing in Dean’s life.

It still takes Dean a long time to get comfortable enough to consider falling asleep, and that comfort is disturbed by a low sound coming from the twin bed.

Dean listens closely, and he can’t make out words, but it’s tight and low. It’s rhythmic. It sounds a lot like singing or prayer.

He wouldn’t have pegged Cas for being religious.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Shotgun and Driver- Sam and Dean- get out of the bathroom at the same time. 

They do that a lot- they do a lot of things together, Sam and Dean. Use the bathroom. Shower. Sleep. 

It's like they're attached to each other. 

Castiel started traveling with them, no more questions asked, a couple of days ago. Always the rooms with two beds, Castiel facing the door. Always the huge dinner platters he and Sam split even though the hunger in him is persistent and hard and burns like a funeral pyre. Always his clothes thrown in with the rags that they use to clean their guns- their many, terrifying guns. 

The first time Dean brought them into the room, Castiel was so sure he was about to die that he kneeled on the floor like Jimmy had in church. Remembered Jimmy's clumsy Catholic prayers, in ugly Latin. Nothing like the prayers the angels used. 

"What the hell are you doing?" Dean had barked. "Get off your religious ass and help clean the gun. Jesus."

Castiel doesn't fall to his knees much around them anymore. 

Sam is lanky- he is tall, lean muscle where his brother is stocky. Dean is built like a bulldog, a piece of physiognomy Castiel finds quite amusing. Sam is taller, but younger than Dean by four years, the same age as Castiel. Jimmy's body is much slighter than either of them, and much thinner, too. 

They dress and then Sam says, "Bathroom's clear, Cas, if you want to clean up."

Castiel nods, and he shuffles into the bathroom. 

He hates looking at himself in the mirror like this. He's too small and too weak. He's scrawny and peppered with reminders of all of his fights. Cigarette burns number equally with razor cuts, but as long as he keeps his shirt on, Shotgun and Driver need never find out. 

There's a lot of things they need never find out, like how  Jimmy got fillings at the dentist and now he picks up angel radio, and a deejay has stowed away inside of him. 


	3. Chapter 3

The first time it happens, Sam isn’t really sure what’s happened. What’s happening. He and Dean are in the booth at the diner across from Cas, who’s looking at his cup of juice and then he looks up and he’s just-

He’s a different person entirely.

He doesn’t say anything, but Sam sees it clear as day. It’s the alien, strange way he turns his head and squints. It’s the way he holds him mouth, it’s the way his eyes narrow almost imperceptibly but viciously.

He only sees it from the corner of his eye, but Sam would swear to god that he sees an arc of lightning jump from Cas’s hand to the fork on the table.

“Cas?” Dean barks.

As soon as it’s there, it’s gone.

Cas blinks a few times, and then it’s all gone. A trick of the moment, a sliver in time, and Cas is back to being this weird skinny kid that Sam had to know and know more about.

Funny thing though, Cas doesn’t much seem to be in the business of answering questions, and with their own history, Sam knows he and his brother aren’t much in the business to be asking them.

Dean looks back down at his own food and take a bite, shoveling the food into his mouth and gripping Sam’s leg tight underneath the table.

Castiel looks at his plate of eggs and sausage sullenly. He looks at all food this way, like he resents it or something. He always picks at it and takes a few bites. Takes a few more and then they drive off.

He probably thinks Sam doesn’t notice the way he vomits it all back up at rest-stop bathrooms, but Sam’s always been really good at noticing the things people don’t think he’s noticing.

Cas has been traveling with them for about two weeks now, and there’s no indication that he’s about to stop. Dean’s beginning to get antsy, though. They haven’t been able to hunt like they really like to since Castiel’s joined them. Sam could take or leave hunting, it’s the books he really loves. Dean loves the chase, though. He loves the hunt and he loves the gunshot and he loves the blood.

That’s another thing Sam notices that other people don’t think he sees. Funny thing about growing up in fucked up places, you learn to be small and you learn to watch. You see the way people get when they’ve been drinking and you see the point when they stop noticing what it is they’re drinking. You see the exact moment they stop loving your brother for looking so much like her and starts hating him for living instead of her. You see the bruises even if you don’t see the blows.

Sam’s real observant.

* * *

 

Dean can’t talk to the kid about it, but he can sure as hell talk to his brother about it.

“Sam it’s fucking creepy as hell,” he says in the shower. Sam’s body is lithe under his hands. His skin is darker than his own and it always has been. Softer, too. Sam doesn’t pick up scars the same way Dean does. Dean makes sure of that.

“I don’t think he can help it,” Sam answers. He sounds a little breathy, a result from both the steam of the shower and Dean’s careful ministrations.

Dean takes care of Sam, and Sam, he takes care of Dean right back.

“I’m worried he’s not safe,” Dean replies.

“If he were going to-”

“I know, I know, he would have done something by now. But the other day, at the diner and then again at the library and then when we were in the car-”

“How would you talk to him about it?” Sam gasps. One of Dean’s hands is on his chest, skittering over that cluster of nerves made more sensitive from hot water.  The other is lower, on his erect cock. “How would we talk about it without talking about what we do?”

Dean loves how Sam sings when he plays him. He loves the way Sam cries aloud, he loves the way he rocks forward and arcs back, he loves the way he says his name when he’s like this.

“Then we tell him,” Dean answers. “We’ve got to tell him.”

* * *

Sam loves the way when Dean is behind him he can’t see his victorious little smirk.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Sam and Dean disappear sometimes. They go off together in the long black car and leave Castiel in the hotel room.

“We’ll be back,” Sam always promises with his goofy little smile. He’s fifteen, Castiel’s found out, sixteen in two weeks. He’s almost a year and a half younger than Castiel is and he’s already so much taller and stronger.

Jimmy’s body is a failure in every sense of the word, and whatever it is inside of Jimmy that makes it grow and change become tough and strong is broken. Castiel tries eating, he tries taking in food, he tries sleeping, he tries everything but all he can do is be still and stay un-hungry. He’s cold and he’s hurting, but he’s not tired and he’s not hungry. He hasn’t been hungry in ages.

They leave, Sam closing the door and Dean watching him warily from the outside and Castiel is so relieved to be alone, every time.

It’s hard not listening to the angels when Sam and Dean are there. Their songs and their orders ring in his head like a siren, too loud to ignore. The door shuts and Castiel counts to ten and he falls to his knees and he rocks, he rocks back and forth and he tries to sing and answer their orders.

He doesn’t know the language that’s coming out of his mouth. He doesn’t know the shape of meaning of the words. It comes up from his belly and body unbidden and he keeps going. He sings the guttural songs with a voice that’s deeper than he knows is quite right and he says things with his borrowed mouth. With Jimmy’s mouth.

He only knows he is asking something, but what he cannot explain.

Singing is kind of like blacking out, because when the song is over, he’s not kneeling any more. He’s tied to a chair and Dean is sitting in front of him with his arms crossed and an expression like a thunderstorm over his face.

* * *

He and Sam come in from the hunt pretty exhausted, but Dean can tell something’s wrong as soon as they pull up in the Impala.

“Stay in the car,” he says. “Wait for my signal.”

Sam usually argues. He’s bullheaded- stubborn. He doesn’t this time, and it makes Dean glad. It’s hard explaining the hunches and the suspicions.

He opens the hotel room door slowly and he shoots first thing, as soon as he sees the blue light in the dark room. He doesn’t even have to see to register the wrongness, he just shoots. It’s a reflex.

Dean blinks his vision back furiously, and then he switches on the lights and mutters fuck.

He’d really, really been hoping it wouldn’t be this.

Cas lays spread eagle out on the floor, belly down and arms out. In his black sweater, his arms almost look like wings. His dark hair like a halo. The blue light is gone, though, and there’s no-

“Shit,” Dean says. “Shit.”

There’s no bullet wound. There’s no bullet wound, there’s no blood, there’s nothing. If the sound of the shot weren’t still ringing in his ears, Dean would swear he hadn’t fired.

“Fuck,” he repeats.

He turns Cas over and fuck.

Cas’s eyes are wide open and there aren’t pupils, just swirling whites, like great unseeing orbs of smoke set into his serene face.

Cas opens his mouth and he says something long and slow and deep and strange. It rumbles and it makes something in the room shake. It makes something inside of Dean shake, like something is being written inside of him. It stings and burns, like being cut or ground or punched a thousand times. He gasps for air and as soon as it was there it’s gone. Cas isn’t saying anything anymore and the feeling isn’t there either.

His white eyes stare out into the room.

Dean leans out of the doorway carefully, gun still pointed at Cas on the floor and shouts to his brother, “Bring rope.”

* * *

Dean’s mouth is in a tense line and he says, “Start talking.”

Castiel looks from Dean’s mouth to his eyes. He swallows dryly. He must have been singing for hours. He coughs a few times and he suddenly feels like he’s going to vomit. That happens too, sometimes. Like something inside of Jimmy is being purged.

Jimmy doesn’t talk as much as he used to.

“Who are you?” Dean demands.

“A great sign appeared,” he says suddenly. Gravely. “ A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” He finds himself frowning. He doesn’t know this.

Something splashes on his face. Castiel licks it up- water. It eases the hoarseness of his throat. He flexes a little in the rope tying him to the chair.

Dean’s jaw tightens, if that’s possible and he says, “What?”

“Twelve stars,” Castiel repeats. “A great sign appeared in the sky.”

Dean pulls out a rosary and mutters over Castiel.

“She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth. Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven diadems,” Castiel continues.

Dean presses the cool metal of the rosary against Castiel’s forehead.

“Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and hurled them down to the earth,” he says.

Dean tosses the rosary away and pulls out a knife.

Castiel feels the torrent of words inside of him stop suddenly as Dean lays the knife on his arm. Sharp side down.

He draws it across his flesh long and slow.

Castiel sees the blood well up along the cut but he doesn’t feel anything. Nothing at all.

Almost as soon as the cut is made, it’s gone. Like it was never there.

“What are you?” Dean growls.

“I-I,” Castiel says. “He prayed for this.” He looks at Dean as something inside of him opens. Like a memory or a tear in a muscle. “He prayed for this. He was devout and I heard and I…” He pauses. “I don’t know.”

“You’re not human,” Dean states.

Castiel looks down. “Something’s wrong,” he answers.

“What’s your name?” Dean demands. “What’s your real name?”

“It was Jimmy,” he says. “That was...that’s this  body. This is Jimmy. But I’m Castiel, or at least I-” He feels helpless. “I think that’s who I am. That’s who they say I am.”

Dean squints. “Who the fuck is ‘they?’” he barks.

“The angels,” Castiel answers, and the admission is beattific. “The angels, that’s what they call me. They call me Castiel and they never stop singing.”

Dean looks horrified and terrified.

“I just want to go somewhere quiet,” he says. “I just want them to shut the fuck up so I can remember. I think I could figure it out if they would be quiet for just- for like ten goddamn minutes or something.”

“Angels,” Dean murmurs. “Goddamn angels.”

“They never shut the fuck up,” Castiel adds.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Sam Winchester is going to be taller than Dean Winchester. Castiel can see it clear as day, see the man Sam is becoming as he walks into the room. Castiel sees the possibility of that flickering like a mirage around the reality of Sam. He’ll be taller- much taller. His hair will keep growing, too long to be practical. A dark tattoo will spread over his pectoral, and his body will change. Broader, stronger. More muscular. Sam will overwhelm his older brother, but he will cling to him for the rest of his life.

The image of Dean haunts Sam like a ghost, and it’s one of the eeriest things Castiel has ever seen.

One of the strangest, but not the strangest.

Sam has a strange soft look on his face when he sits down in front of Castiel.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“I am an angel of the lord,” he answers, before he can qualify it with words like kind of and I think so and something went wrong.

“What does that mean?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know,” he spits out ahead of the myriad words angel radio is trying to send ahead of him. “I don’t know. There’s something missing.”

Sam frowns a little. “What do you mean?”

“Something isn’t right,” he gasps. “Something went wrong. Something’s- something’s all wrong.” Castiel looks for the rest of the right words but he can’t quite find them under the noise inside of him. He feels something like a storm building inside of him, something dangerous.

“Close,” he stammers, “close your eyes. Your ears. Don’t-don’t-”

And then he is overcome by something stranger and more furious than prayer.

* * *

 

When it stops, Cas sits limp in the chair, empty almost. Sam blinks a few times- despite curling into a ball and hiding his ears and eyes, everything is still ringing a little bit, everything looks a little overexposed. He looks at Cas, concerned, and then Dean storms back into the room.

“Sam!” Dean barks.

“I’m fine,” he murmurs, “honestly. What did you- you said angels?”

Dean is helping him up from where he fell onto the floor, one eye focused still on Cas in the chair. “What happened?”

“He tried to...he told me to cover my ears and eyes and then he went...crazy and bright and loud,” he answers. He’s still a little dazed. This is...this is a lot weirder than he had been bargaining for.

Sam and Dean stand in the motel room for a long moment, silent, and then Cas inhales incredibly loud and sharp and looks around, eyes crazed.

“What’s happening?” he shouts. “Where am I? What’s wrong?” He looks at Sam and Dean, suddenly so different, and says, “Who are you?”

Dean’s just opened his mouth when Sam says, “We’re friends of Cas. Who are you?”

Dean looks at Sam a little puzzled, and then the guy in the chair says, “I’m Jimmy.”

“What?” Sam asks.

“You’re Jimmy,” Dean says. “You’re-” he motions up and down, “You’re Jimmy.”

He nods a couple of times, a little frightened. “Yeah,” he says, and everything about him is suddenly so wildly goddamn different. The way he holds his head, the way his voice drops octaves, the way his words come out of his mouth. “Jimmy.” He blinks a few times and then shakes his head, clearly terrified. “The angel...that wasn’t...that couldn’t have been real, could it?”

Dean almost laughs, lets out that huff of breath that isn’t laughter but is almost- almost laughter. “That’s what we’re finding out.”

There’s the enormous sound of a stomach rumbling suddenly and Jimmy blushes just barely. “Could I uh...could I get something to eat?”

 

* * *

Jimmy tears through food like a goddamn wolf, and he sure as shit doesn’t go to the bathroom to throw it back up fifteen minutes later. He looks tired- there are bags under his eyes that look a lot heavier than when Cas was rattling around inside of him.

“So what happened?” Sam asks.

Jimmy swallows. Takes another drink of water. “I was in some bar in...I think it was Texas?” He shrugs. “Anyway, and this guy, this real-” he spreads his hands and arms out wide, “this real big guy starts looking at me.” He pauses, as if for emphasis. “You know what I mean? Like...looking. And I just...I’ve never really been much for praying or anything but I just...I knew that I needed some help.” He takes another sip of water. “And then there was all this noise inside of me, but I knew what it meant, kind of. Told me that it was an angel and that I had a mighty and true purpose and that if I just said yes, it would come down and fix everything.”

“And you said yes?” Dean asks. He’s skeptical and terrified. He saw those lights, he heard the edges of that sound. Who knows what’s inside this kid.

Jimmy nods vigorously. “Well,” he says, “wouldn’t you?”

 Dean frowns. “What do you mean, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I what? Say yes? Kid do you-”

“I’m seventeen,” Jimmy says. “And I’ve been around, okay? Look just give me my bag and I’ll be on my way. I’m fine-”

“When we found Cas, he was hitching on the side of the road,” Sam interrupts. “He wasn’t...actually hitching, though.” He frowns. “Jimmy, there’s something not right, here. Whatever you’ve got, we don’t think it’s an angel or anything even remotely that powerful.” Jimmy frowns and Sammy leans forward, his forearms resting on his knees. “What would an angel want with guys like me and Dean?”

Jimmy lets his head roll over to the side and he frowns a little and for a split goddamn second he looks so much like Cas it’s insane. “I donno,” he says. “You tell me.”

Sam smiles, his dangerous, sweet little smile. “Dean and I,” Sam murmurs. He looks down. “Dean and I are kind of fucked up.”

“You mean the incest thing?” Jimmy asks, and Dean rocks on his heels, he comes so close to punching the kid.

Sam, though, Sam laughs a little and he says, “How long have you been back, Cas?”

And the guy in the chair rocks back and smiles a little and fuck that is Cas.

“Not long,” he answers. “Sorry I scared you earlier, that wasn’t...I don’t know what that was.”

“You don’t seem to know a lot of shit,” Dean murmurs.

“Something went wrong,” Cas says again, forceful. “I don’t know what, but I’m not all here and there’s something wrong with you, too.”

This time, Dean does rear back. He’s follow through, lines through the shoulder practiced and right and delivers right along Cas’s jawline.

Cas rolls with it and then spits over his shoulder. Looks back at Dean. Effortless. Practiced. “Not that,” Castiel says. “I don’t think angel radio really gives a fuck about that. They keep saying something else- something about John?”

Dean pulls back to hit him again and Sam shouts, “Dean!”

He looks back at his little brother, who’s frowning. Furious.

“Go take a walk,” he says, his voice a dangerous little growl.

Dean looks at Cas, and then he looks back at his brother. Pulls down his fist. Slams the door on his way out.

 


	6. Chapter 6

If Dean Winchester is a hurricane, then Sam Winchester is the eye.

Cas remembers something about hurricanes, sometimes. Maybe it was something Jimmy went through, maybe it’s some weird, fuzzy memory from the dawn of time or something, but the one thing Castiel remembers about hurricanes is that the eye is the most frightening part.

“What do you know about John?” Sam asks.

Cas strains to figure out what it is precisely that they’re saying over the angel radio about the man named John. What it is they’re shouting in their millions as one voices. “Too...soon,” he answers. “It’s all happening too soon.”

Sam frowns. “What’s happening too soon?”

“Something else,” Castiel gasps, “was supposed to happen, but then you...then you-”

It’s like he’s there, suddenly. He can smell the whiskey on his breath, he can feel the texture of the light on his skin, he can see the way something here is wrong. Something about the man is wrong- John, the angels tell him.

“He hit you,” Castiel says softly. “He hit you, and it was enough.”

He can hear the cracking of bones, something unnatural,  and then he can hear the sound of gunfire.

“And then he took a shot at you,” he murmurs on. “And then...then Dean…”

Another gunshot.

As quickly as the angels show him, Castiel is blind to it all once more. He blinks a few times and feels something like a furious headache rear up in the back of his head, and then he looks at Sam, who has turned sheet pale.

“How do you know about that?” Sam whispers. “How do you know?”

“The angels see everything,” Cas answers, “and they like to put it in Jimmy’s head sometimes.”

“So you’re in Jimmy’s body,” Sam says softly. “But you’re Cas. You’re supposed to be Castiel, though.”

He thinks for a long moment. “Yeah,” he answers. “I think that’s right. And John died too soon, and that changed...something. Everything. And now it’s all wrong.”

There is a long silence, and then Sam whispers, “It wasn’t Dean’s fault.”

“It wasn’t yours either,” Cas responds. “It...what’s happening to you?”

Sam shakes his head. “We don’t know,” he answers. “We don’t talk about it.” He looks at Castiel and motions to his arms. “Would you like me to untie you?”

Cas looks down at his arms and shrugs. Flexes just the right way and the bonds are gone. Disappeared.

Sam looks a little startled, but he goes with it. He’s okay. He can be okay with whatever this is.

“We grew up together,” he says, apropos of nothing. Suddenly. “You have to understand, Dean is...Dean is the only safe thing in the world.”

Castiel shrugs. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Winchester,” he answers. “Not mine to judge.”

Sam runs his hands through his hair. Looks at Castiel again. “We’re all totally fucked, aren’t we?” He asks.

Cas thinks a moment and then nods. “The angels,” he says, “they keep calling your brother the Righteous Man. I dunno what it means.”

“What do they call me?” Sam asks.

Cas flinches at the question, because the word has been heavy on his mouth and almost unavoidable for days now. It fights him, fights for light and oxygen. Fights to be heard and said.

“Abomination,” Cas answers, looking away.

Sam looks at the air for a long moment and then looks down and away. Looks at his hands, looks at Castiel. “I guess that’s my fault,” he murmurs. “I wanted this. I initiated.” His eyes flick up to Castiel. “I never wanted anyone ex-except Dean.” He looks away, shifts in space. His body is at once too large and too small. “I prayed to angels, when I was a kid,” he says.

“You still to pray to angels,” Cas spits out, almost reflexively. “I hear you.”

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

“So the angel hates when you eat?” Sam asks. Less asks, more...states. 

Cas shrugs. “I don’t know if the angel hates it, but  _ I  _ do,” he answers. “And I can’t sleep either.”

Sam’s eyes are a strange color, one that Jimmy would not have a word for but that Cas knows is called  _ hazel _ \- a shifting of colors from blue through green and into a tawny, amber brown. 

_ Contain multitudes, _ a voice supplies before Cas can suppress it, push it down and away.  _ Legion _ . Cas hates the roiling of their voices, a steady low kind of boil inside of him, trying to slip out, that gagging sensation of puking accompanying their constant presence. 

“I can feel it, every moment,” Cas says. “If you could feel every muscular motion of digestion, you wouldn’t fuckin’ eat either. And if you could feel the muscles in your  _ eyes _ every minute of the day, you wouldn’t sleep.”

Sam doesn’t say anything to that. 

Cas sees him sleep.

He can’t not. He can't unsee the way he sleeps in the car for eight hours a day and the way he sleeps in hotel room for eight, ten hours every night. He can't ignore the bottles of pain medication in the trunk of the car next to the anti-convulsants and the IV kits and the intubation kit. He can't unsee the way Sam is too confused sometimes, too confused for someone who just  _woke up_. He can't unsee the headaches that are too strange, too severe, and too lengthy to just be headaches.

All this, and the prayers. 

“I don’t think you’re supposed to help them,” Cas says.

“Shut up,” Sam interrupts.    
“I think you’re just supposed to see-”

“I said  _ shut the fuck up!” _ Sam shouts. He stands, walks to the door and slams it behind him. 

Leaving Cas alone in the hotel room again.

Cas knows the questions Sam didn’t ask. 

He’s thinking about answering them anyway. 

* * *

Dean walks, fast, angry, for a long time. He walks until he gets to a convenience store and he stands in front of it for a long, angry, awful time. 

He promised Sammy he wouldn’t. He promised. He promised that he would stop, that he wouldn’t drink any more. 

If John saw  _ her  _ in him, then Sam sees...sees  _ him _ in Dean. And Sam is afraid, sore afeared, that whatever it was that made John like that is in Dean, too. 

Dean sees the other ways he is a monster. 

Dean stands in front of the convenience store for a long time, under its flickering lights, before its empty parking lot, temptation laid out before him in some strange and hideous way. 

“Don’t,” he hears a familiar voice say, and Dean turns around and it’s  _ him _ . 

Little  _ shit _ is short, shorter than him and shorter than Sam, despite being a little older than Sam. He looks as shitty and run-over and beat to hell as the first time Dean saw him; looks as maddening and anger-inducing as he does every minute of every day. Dean’s not sure why he didn’t just drive on and keep going; irritate his little brother but maintain his own comfortable peace of mind. 

“How the  _ fuck _ did you get here?” He barks.

Cas shrugs. “Fuck if I know,” he says. “Just got pulled.”

“You’re not wearing  _ shoes _ ,” Dean groans. 

“Didn’t walk,” Cas answers. 

“Where’s my brother?” he demands. 

“Back there,” he says, hooking a thumb behind him. “Hotel room. Or nearby. I think the world is ending.”

This fucker makes Dean want a drink so badly it hurts. 

Dean instead lets out a sigh. 

“What the fuck,” Dean murmurs.

“I think the world is ending, and it’s your fault,” Cas says, and there’s a weird  _ snap  _ and shifting and  _ tilting _ of the world and they’re back in the hotel room and Dean has to go to the bathroom to throw up. 

In between vomiting, he can kind of hear Cas. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. The world is ending, and it’s your fault.”


	8. Chapter 8

Sam stands outside for a long minute and tries to get his breathing under control, to a way that makes him feel safe and comfortable and real again. Sam does this to stave off the migraine that’s more-than-a-migraine. The thing that comes for him, with a terrible purpose and a terrible vengeance. It screams through every nerve in his body, starting from behind his eyes and seizing upward, forward, through his body and into himself. It grabs at him, pulls him down, down, down. Nothing hurts like this. Nothing can hurt like this. This is the abyss.

This pain has a color, a vivid blackness that stretches in front of him like terrible, unconquerable darkness. This is something Sam cannot fight, but can only surrender to.

Not being able to fight it, this is the thing that scares him the most about it. Not being able to fight it, this is the thing that makes it  _ terror _ . Not seeing them--

Not watching them.

Sam stands outside as long as he can, and he stumbles back into the room. Lays out on the bed. Gathers for the barest moment that Cas isn’t in here any longer, and then he  _ is _ in here again. 

Sam understands those paintings-- altarpieces, the ones he saw in DC once when he and Dean were in Virginia on a case-- of angels and saints with their whole bodies surrounded by light now. He remembers the way the the gold leaf around their bodies would eliminate the perspective around them, leaving only a flatness, an immediacy. Something to it that was vivid and hard to see. 

The only one standing in their dingy motel room, Cas has the exact same look to himself. Flattening the space behind him directly into the front, everything about him coming to the fore. The air around him wavers, slightly, or maybe that’s the pain from the headache coming between his eyes like the rushing of a train. He stands there barefoot but his hair and body windswept. Where there was no one before, there is now Dean, clutching at his mouth and gut, rushing into the bathroom. 

Cas looks forward, into no space and nowhere at all and says, “Yeah.” He turns, and looks  _ through _ Sam, with blue eyes that burn and itch where their gaze has landed, and says, “Yeah, the world is ending and it’s your fault.”

Sam’s not sure what happens then, because then he can’t fight the pain anymore, and the darkness takes him down.

* * *

 

Cas can feel all of his body, but mostly he can feel his teeth. The feeling is like being struck by lightning, over and over again, constantly held in that ungrounded, uncomfortable place. Cas is a hurricane. Cas is a tree. Cas is a waterfall. Cas is a mountain. 

Cas is fully, inexplicably, ineffably,  _ power _ , and he can feel stalking inside his bones like a great predator trying to break free. 

Cas knows these things about himself with terrible, complete knowledge, and it’s terrifying. Cas knows these things about himself and not where he came from ( _ you know where you came from, you know, you know) _ and not why he’s here  _ (you know why you’re here, you know, you know _ ).

Cas feels like he’s floating. Cas feels like he’s dying.

The lights in the room, they flicker off and on for a few seconds, and then the feeling passes and he collapses into a chair. Looks at Sam, spread out on the bed, his hands bent painfully at the wrists, his spine rigid, his head thrust back. 

In this, the throes of the vision, he looks like an abandoned martyr. A mistaken God. 

Cas watches him, for a long minute, and then Dean comes out of the bathroom, sees his brother on the bed, and sits beside him. Cas sees the way he leans forward and rests his fingers on his jugular, just barely. So gently. Keeping the pulse. Keeping the messiah alive.

“How long?” Dean asks.

“Nearly two minutes now,” he answers. He hadn’t known he’d been counting, honestly. 

“Do you know what this is?” he asks.

The choir clambers to crawl out of his throat and declare with  _ certainty _ what this is. What this could be. Scrapes against the sides of his mouth to make the answer. 

_ Abomination _ , they scream.  _ Damnation. Hellfire.  _

“He sees the other ones, and there can only be one of them left,” he says, because this is true but kinder than  _ abomination _ . He knows with the weight he feels of it against his tongue that this is the worst word he could use. “He sees them but there’s time coming. It’s coming. There’s blood, inside him. Terrible blood. It wants to reach out.”

He looks at Sam on the bed, messiah of somewhere but nowhere good and he says, “They want him to end the world for them. They want you to help.”


End file.
